LOS ANGELES – An extreme sports athlete from Santa Barbara County was sentenced to six months in federal prison on Monday for intentionally crashing a small plane for a YouTube stunt and then destroying the wreckage.
In November 2021, authorities say Trevor Jacob, 30, took off from the Lompoc City Airport in his single-engine Taylorcraft BL-65 on a solo flight purportedly destined for Mammoth Lakes.
About 30 minutes later, while flying above the Los Padres National Forest, a YouTube video titled “I Crashed My Airplane” shows Jacob saying the plane’s lone engine had failed.
“Holy ****! I’m over the mountains and I have an engine out,” he says.
Jacob jumped from the plane and recorded himself parachuting to the ground. Cameras mounted inside and outside of the aircraft showed it descending over the hills and eventually crashing into dry brush.
“Thank you, God. Thank you, universe. Thank you, higher power, for watching over me,” he says after hiking to the wreckage. He then hiked out of the forest and flagged down a driver.
Prosecutors say Jacob waited two days to report the crash to the National Transportation Safety Board which told him to preserve the wreckage. He stalled the investigation by telling NTSB officials that he didn’t know where the plane went down, according to the DOJ.
More than two weeks after the crash, he and a friend flew a helicopter to the crash site and airlifted the wreckage to Rancho Sisquoc in Santa Barbara County, where it was loaded onto a trailer attached to Jacob’s pickup truck.
“He then cut up and destroyed the airplane wreckage and, over several days, deposited the detached parts of the wrecked airplane into trash bins at the airport and elsewhere,” the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Jacob, a former Olympic snowboard cross competitor who competed in the 2014 Sochi Games, pleaded guilty in June to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation.
According to the plea agreement, Jacob had secured a sponsorship from a company that sold various products, including a wallet, which he intended to promote in the YouTube video.
The FAA revoked his pilot’s license in April 2022.
“It appears that [Jacob] exercised exceptionally poor judgment in committing this offense,” prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum. “[Jacob] most likely committed this offense to generate social media and news coverage for himself and to obtain financial gain. Nevertheless, this type of ‘daredevil’ conduct cannot be tolerated.”